


Hid that Love Up with My Bones

by dilapidatedcorvid



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Banter, Gen, Medical Jargon, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Past One-Sided Attraction, implied Dulcinea Septimus/Palamedes Sextus, tltexchange2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28535652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilapidatedcorvid/pseuds/dilapidatedcorvid
Summary: “You, however... We have not taken great pains to conceal you from the world only to let this advantage gather dust. It’s about time we use that secrecy, hm? No, don’t give me that face, Cam.” Camilla schools her face back into impassiveness from the expression she hadn’t realised she had allowed to cross her brow. “I have spoken of you in every letter I have sent the Duchess.”or, Sixth House chatter during Canaan House as the Warden and his Hand begin to tug on the threads of the mystery that is "Lady Septimus".
Relationships: Camilla Hect & Palamedes Sextus, Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus, dulcinea - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Hid that Love Up with My Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [siltblooded](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siltblooded/gifts).



> [@siltblooded](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siltblooded) prompt: _camilla &palamedes OR camilla/palamedes, the 6th at canaan house with their private little intimacies, moments only they share the significance of, especially inside jokes and insider knowledge that they keep subtly testing cytheria on to see if she's who she says she is_  
> A little creative liberty was taken with this prompt, thank you for the chance to write the Sixth!

The moment the skeletal servitor that led them to their rooms turns on its heel and jaunts back down the hall, Camilla and Palamedes begin to move.

She unzips her duffle bag and drags a chair to the door, using a power drill to remove the short screws at the hinges and replace them with ones twice as long. The wood (real) of Canaan House protests under the duress as it gives under the new steel, and sawdust floats down to gather at Camilla’s feet. It feels sacrilegious to leave age-old wood to be brushed away, but they cannot bother with preservation methods at the moment. Not when they are working to ensure their own preservation.

From the other side of the room, Palamedes gets down on his hands and knees and begins a slow and thorough search of the room, turning over anything and everything he could think of. He presses his fingers into the seams of the walls, flattens his gaunt cheek against the crevices in the room, and checks under all the furniture.

Stepping down from the chair, Camilla tears open a second bag, this of nails, with her mouth and sticks the open bag between her teeth to hold in place while she hooks the powertool to her belt and hoists up a hammer to begin putting in the first of five deadlocks. Strictly speaking, she should be wearing ear protection for this, but it’s no good to save one’s hearing if it takes precious seconds from fortifying the door to save their lives.

“Clear,” Palamedes says, and Camilla is thankful she left her earplugs in her pocket.

She grabs another nail from the pouch hanging in front of her chin and taps it into place, grunting in acknowledgement.

There’s rummaging from behind her and, even without looking, she can imagine the Warden unlatching his cases and appraising the state of his belongings after the trip from the Sixth. “God, this place is old.”

Camilla hums again, testing the fourth deadbolt. She takes the bag from her mouth and says, “Lift with your legs, Warden. It would be most unfortunate for you to find yourself bedridden like a senile geriatric after pulling a muscle within your first three hours at Canaan.”

There’s a suspicious lack of sound for a moment, and then Palamedes sighs. A thump follows, and Camilla tastes the chagrin emanating off him in waves more than she hears it. “Perhaps the Warden’s Hand will be so kind as to offer itself?”

“I am at your disposal.” The last deadbolt slides into place and, pleased the door will hold under assault for long enough they won’t be caught unaware, she pockets the nails and hangs the hammer on her other hip. The Warden’s books are stacked neatly on the floor by the case and she carefully folds her fingers underneath them and lifts them towards the desk.

He reaches for the notebook of flimsy he keeps in his breast pocket as she sets down the first stack, idly flipping through it. His brow is furrowed slightly, as it often is, and Camilla watches him from out the corner of her eye.

His eyebags are a little deeper than normal. If their previous research has proved at all accurate within their haphazard laboratory simulation—there would indisputably be criticism of ecological validity come time for the paper review, but that’s a problem for later—the blackout curtains would be necessary for his rest. If she could get him to rest at all during their time here.

“Did you notice, Cam?”

There are a great many things to be noticed here. The likelihood that she noticed what he is referring to is high, but she needs more before she says anything. She tells him as much with a sidelong look.

“Dulcinea,” he says, without so much as a glance her way.

Camilla nods carefully. The last stack—crates filled with documents—finds itself on the desk, which creaks in protest. The whiteboard needs to go up next. “Charming, although the extent of her condition is unexpected.”

Palamedes hums, pressing his thumb to his philtrum. “Yes, yes… But there’s more.”

Camilla fetches a roll from the bags and steps out of her boots and onto the bed. She squeezes a nail between her thumb and index finger, unrolling a sheet of whiteboard material and hammering it into the wall, pinning a corner over the bed. “You would have to be the one to tell me, Warden. You were the one who kept correspondence with her.”

This is not entirely true. Camilla has stood witness to every letter Palamedes had opened from the Duchess Septimus, and more often than not, lent her ear as he read out her perfect penmanship aloud in his study, playing audience to the questions he throws to the air. These questions, she knows, are not meant for her to respond to. She had never taken to the medical studies quite as he did and keeping up with his thoughts was an impossible feat. And yet, she stayed.

Behind her, Palamedes paces at the end of the bed, gnawing on his lower lip. “Did we bring Document File 1.31?”

The Warden remembers everything; they both know Palamedes doesn’t strictly need to see the files. Still, Camilla has always admired his dedication to cross-referencing. “Crate F, Warden.”

The sound of flimsy being flipped through accompanies the hammer as the rest of the whiteboard roll goes up, and she slides her feet back into her boots to get the curtains.

“Here,” he says, and she abandons the task of unfolding the heavy black drapes to attend to his side. He points to a diagram intimately familiar to Camilla.

There had been gentle contention prior to leaving as to whether or not Crate F should be brought to Canaan. Ostensibly, this was a pilgrimage to achieve Lyctorhood. Whether Palamedes’ medical projects would hinder their progress had been carefully negotiated between them, but even Camilla had to cede that there was no better time to address the Lady Septimus’ ailment than when she would be present with them.

What Palamedes holds in his long, knobby fingers is a copy of a scan the Duchess of Rhodes had been so kind as to send him as he pursued his medical efforts, this one of her oropharyngeal cavity. Notes in blue, never black, have been scribbled across the copy in shorthand. 

“Kindly elucidate?”

He traces his finger along a midsagittal diagram of her head. “Her voice was slightly lower than expected. Based on modelling her larynx, I had anticipated the frequency of her modal speech should be higher than attested.”

Camilla purses her lips. If anyone would digitally reconstruct a person’s vocal tract to estimate what they sounded like, it would be Palamedes for Dulcinea. She clears her throat, swallowing. “Conjecture, Warden. We have only overheard her in conversation and change in pitch could be from any of a great many factors.”

He concedes with a nod of his head. “Yes, I will need to do the calculations when we can discreetly take a sample of her voice on recording, but I would not be making claims solely on conjecture. Documented weakness in the left anterior cricoarytenoid suggests the breathiness in her voice earlier is abnormal as well, and,” he circles where the nasal and oral cavities join, “she has chronic inflammation at the velo-nasal port affecting palatal-pharyngeal valving. Hence—”

“You believe she should be hyponasal despite attested hypernasal speech,” Camilla finishes, and then clicks her tongue thoughtfully. “And yet, your approach is based on an underlying assumption of standard anatomical soft tissue structure.” A presupposition they could not afford. 

_This is the Warden’s shortcoming_ , Cam thinks. His intuition is impressive, but impressive is far from infallible, and too often, intuition masquerades as fact—seductive in its simplicity, deceptive in its deceit, cunning towards confirmation, mortal foe to objective, unchanging truth. Peer review was never his favourite aspect of publication. 

“Hypernasality is just as possible a manifestation of velopharyngeal weakness. Beware bias, Warden. Do not let your desire for inerrancy cloud your judgements; truth over solace in lies.” 

Palamedes nods again with a rueful smile and pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Now, I’m not suggesting anything, but—”

Camilla raises an eyebrow, and, deadpan, says: “You are suggesting that the woman the Ninth cavalier caught on the platform may not, in fact, be Dulcinea Septimus. and that whoever is pretending to be her is doing a questionable job of it.”

Palamedes cocks his head and rubs at the ramus of his jaw with the edge of his thumb. “Well, yes and no, she’s doing a fine job in this instance, but also in this instance, I am in contention of being among the greatest necromancers of our generation. But you are correct. What I _should be_ suggesting is that we shouldn’t be hasty.” He taps the notebook twice with his knuckle and closes it again, tucking it into his breast pocket. “This will warrant further investigation. Subtle inquiry into what she knows and remembers of us as proof of identity.”

Camilla makes to say: “Of you,” but he turns towards the desk and begins to arrange his space.

“I am easy to find information on, easy to lie about. The downside of being Master Warden, apparently, besides having my precious time consumed by squinting at the Fifth’s paperwork and playing hide-and-seek in the fine print as they try to get their spirit fingers on our original documents. It is markedly less fun when you only get to do the seeking, mind you.”

Camilla drags the chair at the door to the window and begins to unfurl the curtains.

“You, however... We have not taken great pains to conceal you from the world only to let this advantage gather dust. It’s about time we use that secrecy, hm? No, don’t give me that face, Cam.” Camilla schools her face back into impassiveness from the expression she hadn’t realised she had allowed to cross her brow. “I have spoken of you in every letter I have sent the Duchess.”

Something seizes in Camilla’s chest. She ignores it in favour of stepping up onto the chair and lifting the curtain rod from the top of the window. She threads the old curtains off, moth-bitten and pale with sun-bleach.

“I do not suspect Septimus would have brought the letters I wrote her.” He says, flattening a piece of flimsy against the desk and scratching at it with a pen. His voice is remarkably empty as he says this. “They are trifling things; the ramblings of an infant to a woman who showed entirely too much grace and patience by writing back a copious number of correspondences from a child. No, I doubt that anyone posing to be her would fail to know about the Fourth Ring testing fiasco, or the time we squeezed in a whole grade point before Telemetry.”

The new curtains go up over the windows, and the Warden sighs in relief, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t realized just how badly they stung until relief had arrived. The glasses sit askew on his knuckles before falling back into place. The curtains are too long and drape too close to the ground, but better too long than too short.

Camilla steps off the chair and returns it to the side of the desk. “Did you have ‘potential imposters’ on your bingo card, Warden?”

He chuckles, taking his glasses off and rubbing them at the hem of his shirt before putting them back on his face. “I suspect this won’t be the only possible instance of foul play. All the more reason we need to get started mapping this place now.”

Camilla settles her hand over the hammer on her belt. “Give me five minutes to unpack.”

He begins to pin his notes to the wall with thumbtacks and hums in a manner that might mean dismissal or might mean “you can do it in three and a half, you spartan cavalier” if one knew him well enough.

Camilla sets her duffle bag onto the cavalier’s cot and replaces the hammer with a torch and her bag of nails with nitrile gloves. Three and a half minutes later, the deadbolts slide open with a hearty _clunk_ and the Sixth step out from their sanctuary and into the depths of Canaan House.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, many thanks to my illustrious beta reader, [@searchforthescars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/searchforthescars), as well as [@jeanlucifergohard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanlucifergohard) for their eyes in looking over the anatomy written in this fic. My deepest appreciations to you both.
> 
> Title from "Oceans Brawl" by Coeur De Pirate
> 
> Tumblr: [frumpkinspocketdimension](https://frumpkinspocketdimension.tumblr.com)  
> Discord: SweetBabyRae#0967


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